


Pinned Butterfly

by whatsanapocalae



Category: Deus Ex (Video Games)
Genre: Acrophobia, Blood and Gore, Earthquakes, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Rescue Missions, Torture, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-23
Updated: 2019-08-23
Packaged: 2020-10-01 18:36:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20367670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whatsanapocalae/pseuds/whatsanapocalae
Summary: I didn't realize it was the anniversary of DX:HR until I was done posting the last thing so I decided to write something actually for it. So Francis got captured and Adam went to get him but there was an earthquake during the rescue. Adam gets pinned and terribly wounded, Francis ends up having to rescue him instead.





	Pinned Butterfly

It wasn’t a big deal. He could heal. He’d had worse than this. He’d had worse. He’d had worse. This was nothing. This was a single bullet, torn through his side, but the trajectory was a physical thing, that was it. He’d survived worse scraped than this. He’d survived being torn apart and put back together, some kind of Frankenstein’s Monster with debt. He’d survived being dropped to the bottom of the ocean. He’d survived everything that he was being examined and laid out, used for science, betrayal after betrayal after betrayal. 

He thought that all buildings were earthquake prepared, but apparently that didn’t matter too much when the walls had been punched through over and over again, on his way here. 

There had been warnings, there were at least a few hours of notice that there was something coming, but he’d ignored it. His mission was more important. Francis was more important. He’d traveled half way across the world to get to him, leaving Prague and his actual job behind on a whim, just because he’d heard of a little bit of trouble. Just because he thought he’d check in and when he did he heard a grumble and some background noise and a location screamed out by a man sounding like he was in as much as Adam was in this exact moment. 

Everything was on fire. It didn’t help. The fire had started in one corner of the building, some wiring sparking off in the initial quake, and it had spread through all of the paperwork. That paperwork that was now floating around him like feathers, as if he was in the middle of a shooting range and they’d just released crows and doves into the smoke. 

He grabbed at the rebar, grit his teeth, and tried to pull himself forward. He could feel his healing factor try to work, to heal his skin around the protrusion. The longer he stayed there the harder it would be. The pain of just a millimeter made him scream out, fingers bending, his grip hard enough to slough off some of the rust. He hadn’t even seen Francis in all of this. He’d hardly seen anyone. 

He’d promised, through his info link, that he was coming. He made sure that Francis never felt alone. He didn’t know what they wanted from him and, other than some gurgling and coughing and pain, he had never gotten a response. It had to be Francis though, there was no way for it to be anyone else. People didn’t cut out infolinks and leave both the link and the owner functional. 

He couldn’t focus. He could hardly even hear. All he could do was feel the way his skin was trying to grow, feel the large protrusion, feel himself shake as he tried to get himself off of it. He could snap necks, he could destroy walls, he could fall thousands of feet, and he wouldn’t feel it. He could’nt snap the rebar. He wasn’t strong enough. 

He was breathing in smoke but that didn’t matter. He had filters for that. The heat was much more of a problem. He already ran hot. This was making his HUD hick up and shake, the glitch making it hard to see. He closed his eyes. 

Part of him was fine with this, was fine with dying. It was poetic, him locked away in a burning tower, all alone. He hadn’t read Frankenstein in years, but he remembered that scene, the monster in the windmill, everything burning, but that may have been the movies. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered anymore. He couldn’t even do what he was meant to do. 

“!@5sen?” It was garbled. It was jibberish, half static and half voice, broken and tired but still a voice. “Y2* the#2e?”

“F.Franc.is?” He shuddered as he tried to reply, as he tried to break through the pain, to get to him, to get something.

“D82 yo( bre!&* the bui#%@ng or some&*ing?” He hardly sounded like himself. Any harshness of his voice was gone. Any snark was forgotten. “Wh(*e are y12?”

“F.Flo.or fif.ty tw.o”

“!m on my #&y,” Francis explained. “Me&+ me ha!#^&y?”

“Can’t. Fran.cis. I...” He didn’t now how to explain. He couldn’t be weak. Francis had been taken and, for the better part of a week, been only updating him with the sounds of pain. He couldn’t ask Francis to save him. He couldn’t expect Francis to be able to. “I can’t. I’m. Stuck.”

“St89k? Fin@, what!#ver, I’ll ge+ to y!@.”

“No!” Adam ordered, trying to pull himself further, struggling and failing and trying not to let the fact that he was sobbing come across the infolink. He couldn’t let Francis know he’d gotten himself in this situation. He couldn’t let Francis know how weak he was. He was a failed piece of machinery, a monster who deserved to die alone, because he’d never had the courage to go out and get attached to someone after Megan. “No. I’m not. You just. Get out. Of here.”

“Too #ad!” Francis grumbled. There was a ding. “Lo#%a like the @#$vator sti!! wo9ks.”

Francis knew not to take the elevator in a building crumbling like this, he had to. Only an idiot would trust the elevator after an earthquake. Or someone extremely desperate.

“Don’t. Waste. Your. Time on. me.” Adam tried to get him to stop, tried to plead. He didn’t come all this way, gotten himself killed, just for Francis to die in an elevator. 

“You wa$+ed your +!me on m3. &nd I c138 %^&( 1236e you here. I !#&d you.” 

Adam could barely understand what he was saying. What he was able to piece together didn’t make any sense anyway. He needed him? 

“Fine. Then. BE. Quick.” 

Radio silence. The heat was getting worse. Adam cursed himself for wearing his jacket. It was too hot, would have been without it, but now it was on fire in places and only his blood was putting it out. He pulled himself up another half inch, before he was coated in sweat and tears and more blood. He had to get off of the spike before Francis got there. He had to get off of there before his body gave out, before he ran out of energy. 

He had perhaps gotten three more inches before there was another ding and a grunted curse and something that must have been a scream of surprised. He glanced over and now he could see the flames. The desks had all caught by now, and the sprinklers had gone off in the distance but the roof was too broken where he was. The fire was being controlled everywhere else. 

He could see the elevator, the light inside of it flickering, and there was Francis, leaning in the doorway, pulling himself forward, slow and staggering. There was a noticeable limp as he came forward, and he was cradling his arm to his chest. Adam couldn’t see his face through all of the black and red and even his hair didn’t look right. 

“Shit shit shit!” Francis growled, pulling up his shirt, as bloody and stiff as the rest of him, over his nose, so he could filter out the smoke. He hopped on one foot over some of the debris and then went to his knees, crawling as best he could on three limbs to get to Adam. “That looks. Well, that looks bad.” His voice wasn’t glitching anymore but there was still that strange quality to it, like he was too weak and hurt to have his normal tone. 

“It. Feels bad.” Adam scrunched up his face. He couldn’t get any further, not on his own. 

“We have to be quick,” Francis grumbled, pulling up in front of him. “We have to get that out. Shit. Can you survive that? Or are you going to bleed out?” 

“I.ll heal,” Adam promised, though he didn’t know if he could. The battery symbol dancing on his HUD was showing empty. 

Francis looked him over. He looked Francis over. With the shirt over his face he couldn’t see all of the damage, but one of his eyes were barely open, some of his hair had been shaved, and his cheeks were both puffy and swollen. The arm held to his chest was clearly broken and some of the fingers on the other hand didn’t look much better. There was a large patch of blood on his leg and he was favoring the other, so he was probably wounded there as well. 

Francis reached out, wincing, as he grabbed Adam’s belt buckle with what fingers he could, struggling to undo it and then he pulled the belt free. 

“What. Are you. Doing?” Adam asked. 

“I saw this in a movie or twelve,” Francis breathed. “I don’t want you biting off your tongue so you’re going to have to bite down on this.”

He held the belt up and Adam took it, putting it in his own mouth. It tasted like blood, his blood, because he was spilling it everywhere. 

Francis took his hands then, one at a time, and he could see how Francis was shaking, how hard it was for him to be standing. He led Adam’s hand onto his good shoulder and Adam gripped it, unable to stop himself from grabbing too hard. 

“You don’t. Have to. Do this.”

“Shut up,” Francis hissed, moving Adam’s other hand onto his waist. “I’m going to do some counting and I’m going to ignore the one and I’m going to pull you. You’re feet are on the ground so you can walk towards me. If you pull me forward I will fall down though.” 

Adam nodded. 

“Okay. Three, two-” Francis pulled. Adam grit his teeth, screaming through them, as he left indents into the leather. He took a step forward, feeling the ridges of the rebar pull through him, rubbing against his tissues. Francis was clutching at him, his arm wrapped around Adam’s back in a facsimile of a hug, dragging him off of the spike. He didn’t stop screaming until he was free, until they were both on the floor, wrapped up in one another, among the flames and debris. 

He spat out the belt, feeling heat and fluid pour out of him, the hole in his side burning. Francis was whimpering beneath him, both of them were soaking wet now. He could see the clean sweeps on Francis’ face from his tears running through the blood. He pulled himself off of Francis, off his broken and bruised body. 

“We have. To go.” Adam tried to pull himself up but the pain in his side erupted and he fell back to Francis’ side. 

“Can you fly?” Francis wheezed. 

Adam closed his eyes. He breathed. He was too tired to even think. In too much pain to fully understand. “My cells are. drained.” 

Francis took his hand again, led it to the pocket of his jacket. His jacket was the cleanest part of him, they must have taken it off of him when they were hurting him. “Found some energy bars downstairs. I ate one but I thought. If you were in danger. You’d need it more than me.” 

“Fran.cis,” he didn’t need to say it. He didn’t need to say anything. Francis probably hadn’t had much to eat in the past week but he was saving things for Adam. He had been tortured but he was making time for Adam. He was hardly able to walk but he’d made his way up to Adam. 

Francis did have energy bars, three of them, in his pocket. Depending on how much healing would take up of his energy this should be enough to get them down to the ground floor with the Icarus. He unwrapped and ate two of them before dragging them both away from the flames, away from the rebar he’d been impaled on. 

He was able to stand after a little bit and then he was getting Francis to his feet as well. They were both struggling to stand, but they were leaning on each other. He got them over to the window and Francis buried his battered face into Adam’s chest. It was easy to shield someone so small as Adam shoved his elbow into the already spider webbed glass, opening their route out. 

“Now would be a bad time to mention I’m afraid of heights, isn’t it?” Francis creaked out a broken laugh. 

“Just. Hold onto. me.” Adam ran his hand through Francis’ longer hair. Where they’d shaved him it revealed the ports at the back of his skull. 

Francis did. He pushed them out of the window. They only fell five feet before the Icarus kicked in, golden light shining out from around him, creating an orb of light and air to slow their decent. 

“You. Okay?” Adam asked, still stroking Francis’ hair. 

“No.”

“Me neither,” Adam admitted. “Thank yo.u for. coming for. me.”

“You came for me first. I couldn’t just leave you.” 

There was something else there, hanging on the air and then left behind, snatched away by their descent. Adam wished that he could reach out and catch it. 

“I would. Always. Come for you,” Adam admitted, holding Francis closer. 

There were sirens beneath them. There was help coming. They were going to be alright, eventually. Francis lost consciousness by the time they landed, from shock or from pain Adam couldn’t be sure. Even then, on the ground, he had a hard time letting go of Francis. He wanted Francis to stay with him, not just then, but back into Prague. Every time they separated something terrible happened to at least one of them. He wanted to keep Francis with him. He wanted to know what had been left in the air.


End file.
